his brief, abrupt sentences. He continued:

Thus at the age of seven I found myself an orphan. My grandfather
searched my mother's house and seized all the money and valuables he
could carry away. Then, leaving the rest, and declaring he would have
nothing to do with lawyers, he did not even wait for the funeral, but
took me by the collar and flung me on to the crupper of his horse,
saying: "Now, my young ward, come home with me; and try to stop that
crying soon, for I haven't much patience with brats." In fact, after
a few seconds he gave me such hard cuts with his whip that I stopped
crying, and, withdrawing myself like a tortoise into my shell, completed
the journey without daring to breathe.

He was a tall old man, bony and cross-eyed. I fancy I see him now as he
was then. The impression that evening made on me can never be effaced.
It was a sudden realization of all the horrors which my mother had
foreshadowed when speaking of her execrable father-in-law and his
brigands of sons. The moon, I remember, was shining here and there
through the dense foliage of the forest. My grandfather's horse was
lean, hardy, and bad-tempered like himself. It kicked at every cut of
the whip, and its master gave it plenty. Swift as an arrow it jumped the
ravines and little torrents which everywhere intersect Varenne in all
directions. At each jump I lost my balance, and clung in terror to the
saddle or my grandfather's coat. As for him, he was so little concerned
about me that, had I fallen, I doubt whether he would have taken the
trouble to pick me up. Sometimes, noticing my terror, he would jeer at
me, and, to make me still more afraid, set his horse plunging again.
Twenty times, in a frenzy of despair, I was on the point of throwing
myself off; but the instinctive love of life prevented me from giving
way to the impulse. At last, about midnight, we suddenly stopped before